1. Field of the Invention
One or more aspects of the invention generally relate to native command queuing for host controllers that use the serial ATA (SATA) II protocol, and more particularly to software based implementations of native command queuing.
2. Description of the Related Art
The serial ATA II disk access protocol improves disk access performance by permitting queuing of commands to transfer data between system memory and one or more disks. When the commands are queued, each disk within a system is able to process the disk accesses in an order based on the head position, reordering commands to minimize disk head repositioning and rotational delay. A conventional host controller includes logic to perform the native command queuing feature. Specifically, the queued command state is stored and maintained within the conventional host controller. Furthermore, the logic also performs setup for each direct memory access (DMA) transfer between the system memory and a disk. Including this logic within the conventional host controller increases the die area of the device, thereby increasing the cost of the device.
Accordingly, it is desirable include support for native based command queuing in a host controller for use with SATA II disks to improve disk access performance. It is also desirable to minimize the die area needed to include support for native based command queuing in the host controller to reduce the cost of the host controller.